BRUCE NAUMAN

Early Years

Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1941; as a child, he made model aircraft in his father’s workshop. He also played classical guitar and became interested in the music of Arnold Schoenberg. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in maths and physics in 1964, and completed his MFA at University of California, Davis, in 1966. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute between 1966 and 1968, and at University of California, Irvine, in 1970. While living in various places in California (including a vacant grocery store in San Francisco), he used 16mm film and a fixed camera to record himself. In New York City in 1968, he started using a portable video camera. He moved to New Mexico in 1979.

Bruce Nauman: Artworks

Bruce Nauman famously said in a 1987 interview with Joan Simon that he wanted to make artwork that was “just there all at once”. He added: “Like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better, like getting hit in the back of the neck. You never see it coming; it just knocks you down. I like that idea very much: the kind of intensity that doesn’t give you any trace of whether you’re going to like it or not.”

• One of Nauman’s earliest neon works was inspired by an advertising sign for beer. Inside a pink-red spiral, cursive writing spells out the piece’s title: The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) (1967). Blending mass culture and “serious” art, the piece invites viewers to think about the cultural position of art and artists. Other early neon pieces used two words, demonstrating Nauman’s interest in wordplay. Raw War (1970—1972) flashes “war” and “raw” in bright red light, while Eat Death (1972) places the word “eat” in yellow on top of “death” in blue.
• Nauman’s video performance works feature repetitive and also physical/slapstick actions, such as 1993’s Think, in which he shouts “Think”, or Bouncing in the Corner, No 1 (1968), in which he spends almost an hour crashing his body against the right-angled corner of two adjacent walls.
• Animals frequently appear in Nauman’s art—he works with the moulds taxidermists use to create their pieces and produces artworks that are in turn disturbing (1988’s Carousel (Stainless Steel Version) in which a machine moves four canine forms in a circle), playful (in 2 plaster coyotes horizontal (2024), one coyote balances on the other) or violent (2024’s Plaster coyote with inverted head and hammer).

Bruce Nauman: Select Awards

• Skowhegan Award (1986)
• Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, San Francisco Art Institute (1989)
• Max Beckmann Prize, Frankfurt (1990)
• The Wexner Prize, Ohio State University (1994)
• Golden Lion, 48th Venice Biennale (1999)
• Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City (2000)
• Honorary Doctor of Arts, California Institute of the Arts (2000)
• Praemium Imperiale Prize for Visual Arts, Japan (2004)
• Golden Lion for Best National Participation, 53rd Venice Biennale (2009)
• Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2014)

Bruce Nauman: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Bruce Nauman: Pasadena Years, Marian Goodman Gallery, Los Angeles (2025)
• Bruce Nauman, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2024)
• Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies, Punta della Dogana, Venice (2021)
• Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts, Schaulager, Basel (2018) (and touring)
• Bruce Nauman: Infrared Outtakes, Soft Ground Etchings, and Crossbeams, Galeria La Caja Negra, Madrid (2012)
• Bruce Nauman: Dead Shot Dan, Contemporary Art Museum St Louis (2009)
• A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2007) (and touring)
• Bruce Nauman: Neons, Sculptures, Drawings, Van de Weghe Fine Art, New York City (2002)
• Bruce Nauman: Shadow Puppet Spinning Head, Hauser & Wirth, Zürich (1997)
• Bruce Nauman: Prints and Multiples, Museum van Hedendaagse, Ghent (1991) (and touring)
• Bruce Nauman: Drawings/Zeichnungen, 1965—1986, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (1986) (and touring)
• Bruce Nauman, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City (1980)
• Enforced Perspective: Allegory and Symbolism, Ace Gallery, Vancouver (1976)
• Bruce Nauman: Floating Room, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California (1973) (and touring)
• Audio/Video Projects, Palley Cellar, San Francisco (1969)
• Master of Arts degree exhibition, University of California (1966)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Tacita Dean, Bruce Nauman, Marian Goodman, Paris (2026)
• Bodies in Motion—Form in the Making, Kunsthalle Mainz (2024)
• Double Act, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2022)
• Rodin / Nauman, Saarlandmuseum—Moderne Galerie, Saarbrücken (2019)
• Strange Pilgrims, The Contemporary Austin (2015)
• 1969, PS1 Contemporary Art Centre, New York City (2009)
• Disorder in the House, Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels (2007)
• The Disembodied Spirit, Bowdoin College Museum of Art (2003) (and touring)
• Contemporary German and American Art From the Froehlich Collection, Tate Gallery Liverpool (1999)
• What is Political, Anyway?, Boras Konstmuseum (1992)
• Photography and Art—Interactions since 1946, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1987) (and touring)
• Peter Stuyvesant Collection: A Choice within a Choice, Provincial Begijnhof (1981)
• documenta 6, Kassel (1977)
• Drawings: Seventies, Joseloff Gallery, Hartford (1973)
• Repair Show, Berkeley Gallery, San Francisco (1969)
• Eccentric Abstraction, Fischbach Gallery, New York City (1966)

Further Reading

• Artist profile page at Sperone Webster
• 2024 profile in Ocula
• Artist profile at MoMA
• Bruce Nauman’s 1987 interview with Joan Simon, published in ArtNews in 1988
• Bruce Nauman in conversation with Michael Auping in The Brooklyn Rail (2024)
• 2020 profile at Tate

Bruce Nauman FAQs

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